Permission agnostic FS?

Support & Help Requests
#1

I am making my final transition from windows to Ubuntu Mate and have a sort of server kind of box with many NTFS partitions.
Moving forward it is desired to use the data from those partitions from Linux - and it need not be full-time availability.
I have a very nice drive docking slot on my new box that allows unattached drives to be easily used as removeable devices, so that part is covered.

With Linux I use EXT3 consistently - but find that sometimes it chooses for me that some things belong to root - which is not only useless to me - but highly demanding of my time when I need to repeatedly CHOWN things to make use of them.
This seems to be happening no matter if something is NTFS or EXT3 (& I seldom use FAT32 at all).

Here is my query:
I wish to be free of that problem AND have reliable file storage & access.
So=> is there an FS which is sort of permission agnostic ??

Thanks for any helpful replies !!

#2

ZFS - Zeta-byte File System - best in the world for now - more datail on internet how to manage it and how to install it (as is from Sun Solaris OS - no default available on linux sistem)
I put here some simple commands in next post

#3

  • to install it on linux
    $ sudo apt-get install zfsutils-linux

  • to create a pool with one drive
    $ sudo zpool create My_Big_Storage /dev/sdb

  • to mount it / unmount it
    $ sudo zpool import My_Big_Storage
    $ sudo zpool export My_Big_Storage

  • check for data errors
    $ sudo zpool scrub
    and after
    $ sudo zpool status

You can also enable those enhanced ACL (acces Control List) as Windows has,
Of course there are more administrative commands , check the guide. You can use it as a soft raid, use entire drives, or a partition, create encrypted volume and place inside of it,...

Note Don't use it on 32bit installs, it my crash and lock your system

#4

Thanks Very Much for replying to my query Mircea !!

Sadly, ZFS isn't compatible with windows & will not be readable and/or accessible for something like my older NB PC, which still relies upon having an older windows OS.

Adding to my own info here...eXfat looked like a possible solution, except that it is mostly unsupported or problematic with older windows versions and is reported as constantly mounting under root - so that will not simplify matters for me, sadly.

Thanks Again !!

#5

No idea if the permissions agnosticism portion of this can or will ever be answered, but:
I spent a bunch more time searching & reading & it seems that as close as I'm likely to get to interoperability is a way to mount EXT3 RW under windows with this driver:
http://www.fs-driver.org/index.html
This way I can put my stored info on a drive formatted to EXT3 and use it as an external for either the new box with its nifty removeable drive bay, or via a USB adapter with my old NB.

I would really prefer not to have the permissions problem possibly reoccur though, if there is a way to be rid of that...

#6

Permission system is at the very heart of unix/linux and there is no way to get rid of it.

Well, they say, addition of two lines

username ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:/bin/mount      
username ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:/bin/umount

to your /etc/sudoers file might help.

1 Like
#7

you can access any file system on windows ... use SAMBA /CIFS
Virtualbox is an option to access directly anything from windows...
if you want something without hassle use NTFS, it can be accessed both in Linux and in Windows, if you want something also android compatible use ExFAT as you already mentioned, otherwise stick to NTFS

#8

Thanks for replying Ugnvs & Mircea !!

An example of what has happened with my own PC was posted by me before...and remains baffling.

The gist of it was:
I needed to use a USB stick formatted to NTFS & it ONLY mounted as owned by root, making it useless to me - and nothing I could do got it to CHOWN properly;
I had to move all the files onto a box with a different OS, then re-format that stick in my Ubuntu Mate system before I could get around this limitation.

The central idea behind such USB devices is their interoperability - which this problem defeats, soundly UNLESS one operates as root 100% of the time, which is always said to be a bad idea.

When I am logged in as 'user' and connect ANY sort of removeable media - it is important to me that said media does either of these two things:
1 - Mount as being owned by 'user', or;
2 - Not have ANY obstructive permissions AT ALL.

The main idea here being that I am the sole user of my PC and DO NOT need protection from MYSELF !!!

This thread centers upon my needs of using removeable media, whether it be an external HDD or a USB stick...just by connecting that media.

If I want the same situation to occur with a VM of windows all I need to do is to connect that device - but virtualization is NOT what I do with my full time OS; likewise, using SAMBA to connect with my own media is an absurdity - and with regards to an external HDD, there is no certainty that ExFAT will be fully interoperable to different OSes.

This is just the sort of thing that anti-Linux folks like to snicker at.
Needing to go through the rings of h*ll just to use one's own USB stick or external HDD ?!?
(Wow (they'd say...) you Linux lovers are just plain NUTZ.)

#9

Well, I am afraid, your first post claimed a bit different situation...

  1. I never had any problem with legacy ntfs-formatted usb-sticks in Ubuntu since year 2008. These sticks had Windows NTFS read-write permissions for Everyone

  2. Read-onfy access to ntfs-formatted (usb) drives can arise due to ntfs inconsistencies, which have to be cured under Windows.

#10

Yep, sure seemed like that would be all nice & easy with that absurd situation - but it wasn't.
And also - yes - it makes ZERO sense AND has no good explanation - but it did happen.

Like so:
Put the stick in the windows box & made sure it had windows NTFS read-write permissions for everyone AFTER running the disk check utility and having it find no problems...and then:

Stuck that stick back into the Linux box to find...it had ONLY immutable root permissions again !!!

Why or how, no clue - nothing changed that short of formatting it in the Linux box after wasting loads of time copying the data from it to a safe location, then re-writing its own data back to it.

I wish to avoid such nonsensical wastes of time & effort in the future, if possible.

#11

Flash sticks use exfat , so stick to it. this file system does not have any per user permission, some arhives are the same

#12

What about formatting your usb-stick to extfat in ubuntu as a workaround of ntfs problems?

#13

I did some searching & reading about ExFAT as soon as it was mentioned here and the single worry resulting is whether or not it is suited to use with external HDDs;
Some mention was made of it NOT being good for that.

There was also some mention I ran across of some sort of 'universal file system', but apparently that is vaporware as I found no further specifics about it except for confused pointers to UDF and/or UNIX.

There appears to be a great answer here:


Which I will very soon test with a pair of external HDDs.

Thanks !!

#14

I pretty much use exFAT on externals it works

#15

Thanks !!
Just cleared off a HDD to test ExFAT with & will be testing that as soon as I catch up with a couple of other things that I am doing tonight.

#16

That's pretty much what you've got to use if you want something you can read on some Android handsets. I've done it before where ExFAT is shareds torage, which Windows can read with Ext4 parts for Linux, then use file links to symlink from the Ext4 partition into the ExFAT partition. (It works.)